Nowadays, a consumer is presented with an incredible quantity of video information for his or her use. Not only are an enormous number of feature movies available, but also the quantity of channels on a television provide an almost limitless variety of video information to be viewed. Furthermore, the proliferation, miniaturization and low cost of video cameras, along with the ubiquitous Internet, means that even more and more video information can be captured for viewing for wide variety of reasons. Not only is the quantity of video information increasing, but the ease by which a consumer may access video information is also increasing. For example, a consumer at home has access to traditional broadcast television, cable television, satellite television, and perhaps even television over the Internet. Further, a wide variety of set-top boxes and other devices are being marketed that allow consumers the unprecedented ability to interact with video information, to store video information, or to replay video information on their own terms. This increase in video information is not only available to the consumer at home, but is also becoming more available to the office worker on his desktop or to any of a variety of professionals who record and use video information as part of their livelihood.
This tremendous increase in the amount of video information available to a consumer and the ease with which it may be accessed presents certain difficulties for a viewer. It can be difficult to search through or “navigate” such video information if the content is extremely long, or there are a variety of chose from.
For example, the usual way that most viewers navigate through a movie is to use fast forward or rewind such that the frames flash by in quick succession. Even if the movie has been stored on a hard drive connected to a monitor, fast forward or rewind is still used; there is no reliable technique for identifying particular portions of the movie based upon its contents. A similar problem exists with surveillance videos made by a consumer or by a professional in that the contents need to be analyzed to detect certain activities. Consider a home surveillance video left on over the weekend, a consumer would have to fast forward through the entire forty-eight hours or more in order to detect if any untoward activities had occurred and been captured by the video. Once solution used is to trigger a video camera with a motion detector so that the camera is only on when motion occurs. This technique cannot differentiate between types or motion and still may result in hours and hours of video information that needs to be viewed.
In another situation, consider a channel guide being presented to a viewer on a home television. The channel guide list channels, the names of movies, and a brief narrative for each. For the viewer, however, there is no easy and reliable technique to determine the content of the movie, the type of action it contains, the amount of violence, or where certain types of content might occur in the movie.
Similarly a viewer looking at a channel guide who would like to watch a movie that has a particular tone, certain types of action, or other desirable characteristics, is not able to simply and reliably initiate a search for that type of movie either on his own hard disk, or through the selection of movies presented by a context supplier (such as broadcast, cable or satellite).
Another problem with the proliferation of video information available in the home is the increase in the amount of undesirable sex and violence in certain shows and its effect on young children. Often, parents desire to restrict access to certain shows based upon their rating. Unfortunately, though, rating standards are not uniform between home television programs and movies in commercial theaters, and may differ slightly depending upon a geographic region or upon the network supplying the programming. Further, these rating standards always seem to be changing and it can be difficult for the average consumer to keep up with the different rating standards and their meanings. Often, an otherwise excellent movie that is suitable for children may be restricted from their viewing because one or two scenes contain offensive material. A technique would be desirable to assist viewers with the interpretation of ratings for video information and to allow movies to be watched more easily by a wider audience with safeguards in place.
A variety of prior art techniques have been suggested to deal with the navigation of video information but are not optimal. For example, it is known to produce a slider bar at the bottom of a movie being shown to allow a viewer to quickly select and move to any point within the movie. This bar, however, presents no information to viewer other than an indication of a chronological point in the movie where the view can go. Very small renditions or thumbnails of scenes as well as vertical lines representing scene breaks have also been used.
In one experiment, researchers from MIT made video “solids” where you could see the edge pixels of a video stream. Thus, one can view an actual three-dimensional solid that represented each image from the video being stacked next to one another. Although interesting from a research point of view, the video solid did not greatly assist a viewer in navigating through a video stream.
In another area somewhat related to the navigation of video information, consumers are also being bombarded with a great number of books for reading. Although a reader is generally apprised of the content of the book by reading the flyleaf, there is no simple technique for determining the tone of a book, its emotional content or the type of action it contains aside from actually flipping through the book and reading various pages.
Giving the above difficulties with the proliferation of video information and determination of its contents, systems and techniques are desirable that would allow a viewer to quickly and easily navigate video information.